I had always loved the skat­ing rink. It was my sec­ond time on the rink, I think. It looked so easy when you see peo­ple young and old glid­ing on the ice grace­ful­ly. My first time, it was slip­pery, nev­er­mind that. The grooves that those peo­ple make on the ice, felt right to my legs. Why can’t peo­ple build soft­er skat­ing shoes? Per­haps that way, I don’t feel the grooves on the ice?

It was a weird feel­ing, a feel­ing that I did not remem­ber from my first time skat­ing at Pyra­mid Ice.

I still remem­ber the first time, after so many times of per­suad­ing that the boy need to do, that I went over to the rink, with him and anoth­er friend. The boy gave the excuse that we can final­ly hold hands in pub­lic, which is a very much giv­en excuse, ever since my fond­ness of pub­lic dis­play of affec­tion.

—

After that much per­sua­sion I final­ly gave in, and with anoth­er friend, we went to the skat­ing rink.

The stinky shoes, the chill from the ice, the sog­gy gloves.

I final­ly did it. I was on the ice. The boy hold me by my hand, slow­ly drag­ging me. I tried to slide on the ice myself, and to no avail, I felt like my world been shak­ing too much, I can’t stand still on my feet.

There it was, the fall. Right smack cen­ter of that 2 butt cheeks. I felt the ice crack­ing until the skin of my pants, I real­ly did.

I sat there on the ice, unspo­ken. Still trau­ma­tized from the fall. The fear that I feared the most.

It was those feel­ing where you want­ed to shout out loud, but there’s some­thing that is block­ing your vocal cords. It was the same feel­ing that I had last time, when I fell down from the bicy­cle on the way to school.

I do admire peo­ple that can skate very well. I admire that they do not have the pho­bia of falling down like I did. I know damn well that, with­out this falling sen­sa­tion, I too can be very good at it. I love the care­free move­ments, I love the speed and I love the sen­sa­tion of wind rub­bing against the hair.

Of course, the boy picked me up after that. He was wor­ried. He kept on ask­ing me if I was alright, but I can’t answer him. Just kept on nod­ding to him, and he then took me the the bench.

He hold me tight, wor­ried about what had hap­pened. I can see it from his eyes that he had regret drag­ging me to the skat­ing rink despite my protest. I wish I could tell him it was alright, and that I do not blame him.

We hugged, for once at the bench at the skat­ing rink com­pound, in the pub­lic eyes, we hugged.